Why do we think that our Logic is 'The' Logic?

Question

Considering many scientists who believe that humans are nothing special, how do we trust our logic that much that makes it 'The' Logic?

For me, it's being very contradictory, how a non-special being just trust himself so much? To what extent a non-special being has to trust his reasoning? How trusting his own logic(Which indicates he isn't special) isn't considered special enough?

Doesn't make this thesis a logically incoherent thought?

I want to know why this thesis is already too common despite its clear inconsistency.

Answer 1

From a certain POV, we have to think that because of what logic is.

From a neo-Intuitionistic perspective, a la Steven Kleene, mathematics, and logic in particular, is the full elaboration of the set of 'intuitions' or assumptions about ideas that all humans ultimately share. It is the set of things to which we naturally respond with the calm acceptance of the proven, and for which the only challenge to belief is sheer complexity.

There may be some delving about to make us recognize them, but as Plato noted in the Theatetus, they bubble up from inside, or they fail to. And those for whom they fail to are then deprived of a certain part of human cultural experience.

But that means that whatever does not at some level follow the rules of logic and or mathematics is incomprehensible to humans as a whole. So we don't question logic because generally, when we needed to, we are set to be thwarted. If we admitted logic did not in any way apply to a situation, we would just be sunk anyway.

Humans are often very herd-like beings, and we tend not to care much for what cannot be shared with other humans. So human thoughts that cannot be wedged into accepted logic tend not to matter, unless they pay off in some demonstrable way.

We do make the effort to build up artificial logical approximations to the parts of the world where it pays off to defy our logic. We may find them endlessly fascinating. Many intelligent people in our culture fought with quantum mechanics very hard. Others among us are amazed by our own unconscious behavior or with that of other animals that do not share the logic of our conscious process and yet survive very well.

But we can still only share experiences of those things with one another with great effort and to a limited degree. A large segment of the populace will always consider them a waste of time.

Answer 2

It's possible for a flawed ("non-special") agent to arrive at objective ("special") facts/truths. For example, Newton held all kinds of occult beliefs (of which at least some are probably false!), but this did not prevent him from discovering objective facts about the observable universe, e.g. Newton's laws of motion.

So, IMO, there's no contradiction between the claim that our reasoning ability may be in some sense flawed (e.g. limited), and the claim that our reasoning ability can (still) help us discover some important facts.

Answer 3

Our logic is the valid logic because it has been abstracted from reality. There is only one exception, namely the quantification over infinite sets. That is invalid logic, as has been recognized by famous mathematicians long ago already. As an example I quote Hermann Weyl:

Brouwer opened our eyes and made us see how far classical mathematics, nourished by a belief in the "absolute" that transcends all human possibilities of realization, goes beyond such statements as can claim real meaning and truth founded on evidence. According to this view and reading of history, classical logic was abstracted from the mathematics of finite sets and their subsets. (The word finite is here to be taken in the precise sense that the members of such set are explicitly exhibited one by one.) Forgetful of this limited origin, one afterwards mistook that logic for something above and prior to all mathematics, and finally applied it, without justification, to the mathematics of infinite sets. This is the Fall and Original sin of set theory even if no paradoxes result from it. Not that contradictions showed up is surprising, but that they showed up at such a late stage of the game! [Hermann Weyl: "Mathematics and logic: A brief survey serving as a preface to a review of the philosophy of Bertrand Russell", American Mathematical Monthly 53 (1946) 2-13]

However this facet of presently used logic is rather inconsequential because all results of research concerning infinite sets are irrelevant for any real application.